News

The Green Ballymun Community Conference took place on Wednesday 29th of November in Trinity Comprehensive School. This aim of this community conference was to provide space to learn and share solutions to reduce emissions in Ballymun as soon as possible.

Dublin City Council has been busy developing their new Climate Action Plan. As part of this work the Council has identified Ballymun as a key area for action. The plan is to develop actions to reduce emissions with the Ballymun community. To do so, we need to hear from the local community and this conference was an excellent space to do this.

We heard from a brilliant line-up of speakers: 

• Grainne Ryan from Environmental Education Unit, An Taisce Climate Ambassador Programme
• Eva Cantwell from the Active Travel department of Dublin City Council,
• Michelle Nolan of Connecting Cabra
• John O'Donoghue of Ballymun Tidy Towns
• Dr Robert Egan of Trinity College Dublin
• Sustainable Energy Communities Mentor, Ger Doherty

We were joined by local organisations who showed us some of the wonderful initiatives happening in the Ballymun community:

• The Rediscovery Centre
• Global Action Plan Ireland
• The City Farm Ballymun
• Ballymun Health & Fitness
• Ballymun Biodiversity Action Plan
• Dublin City Council's Active Travel Team
• TOMRA Recycling

As well as informative presentations there was time for facilitated discussion where participants had an opportunity to detail what they felt was working well in Ballymun in relation to climate action, what might need to change, what version of Ballymun they'd like to see in 30 years time and actions that could help reach their vision of Ballymun. For a summary of the event, check out the amazing graphic created by Hazel Hurley during the conference.